"The era of wonderful nonsense", as conservative newspaper columnist Westbrook Pegler later termed it. A dizzy, giddy time of petting parties, bootleg gin, jazz, and flappers. When coffee and movie tickets cost a dime, trolley rides cost a nickel (the same as hot dogs or hamburgers), newspapers cost two cents... and sliced bread was considered the greatest invention ever.

The setting of many an Agatha Christie mystery, this is one era that absolutely lives up to the stereotypes and then some. The Great War was over, (most of) the Western world had never been so prosperous — time to par-tay! And after four years of trench warfare and a flu pandemic that killed over 50 million people, most everybody needed cheering up.

Style is almost exclusively Art Decomoderne, all minimalist lines and coolly fluid shapes. There were plenty of additional opportunities for employing that style in the many new consumer appliances that came on the market. Electric refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, fans, toasters, phonographs, radios and other gadgets were sold by the millions, with installment plans allowing more people than ever to buy them. And automobiles stopped being referred to as "horseless carriages" mainly used for Sunday rides and became a wanted everyday commodity, ´pretty much helped by its wartime use, the same for "flying machines" and "air balloons" (unfortunately, one of the two would have a tragic end in mainstream terms in the late 30s).

Dresses are short and so is ladies' hair. Bobbed hair had actually emerged earlier, around 1915, and was popularized during the late 1910s out of convenience during the war, as well as through the earlier 1920s. Hemlines gradually rose from ankle to calf-length during the First World War and to knee-length by 1925. Hosiery and high heels were on display, and younger women sometimes rolled down the tops of their stockings and applied rouge to their knees. Despite those costumes you buy these days, most dresses were not fringed or figure-hugging, and above-the-knee hemlines were nonexistent for grown women at any time. Dresses had boxy and boyish silhouettes, dropped waists and were minimally or highly decorated depending on the occasion. Women's hat styles included a head-hugging shape called a cloché (after the French word for "bell").

Characters include gangsters and G-men, flappers and their "sheiks" (sort of proto-metrosexual young males), languid white movie idols and jolly black jazz singers and dancers, and lots of cheery collegiate types who wear huge fur coats, straw hats and wide "Oxford bags" (flared trousers) and play ukuleles while dancing the Charleston and shouting "23 skidoo!" People sat on flagpoles and swallowed live goldfish, and stunt men swung golf clubs and played tennis while standing atop airplanes in flight. The basic idea was to shock, amaze and amuse at all costs; there were apparently some women of the era who would greet their guests in the bath.

The fun and excitement is only heightened by the fact that much of it is totally illegal, at least in the USA. There Prohibition is in full swing, so gin is made in bathtubs, smuggled by the likes of Al Capone and served in 'speakeasies', hole-in-the-wall bars highly prone to raids by stolid, humourless cops, or an ambush by the eccentric Izzy and Moe prohibition agent team in disguise. Hip flasks are handy for taking your booze along for the ride, and the mixers in cocktails will take the edge off the cheap stuff. Unless you're Treasury Agent Eliot Ness or one of his elite team of incorruptible agents, The Untouchables, be extra cautious to never insult a tough-looking Italian in a sharp suit, or you'll find yourself looking down the barrel of a Tommy Gun (some of those Jewish and Irish guys are no pushovers either).

However, this growth of the influence of modern life in urbanized northern states ran headlong into more conservative communities (especially in the south) which tried to keep modern ideas like the theory of evolution out of their schools. The state of Tennessee tried to do so with the Butler Act, which banned evolution from school curriculums. The small town of Dayton, suffering from an economic slump, took advantage of this and persuaded the local teacher, John Scopes, to be indicted under this law in order to have a big publicity trial to bring in the tourists. The plan worked perfectly, and the resulting "Monkey Trial" (as journalist and satirist H. L. Mencken famously dubbed it) proved to be one of the most dramatic and publicized of the century, with the confrontation between the noted populist leader and religious conservative William Jennings Bryan and the famed defense lawyer and noted agnostic Clarence Darrow being the highlight of the event. As it happens, the prosecution's win was never seriously in doubt, but the victory was a Pyrrhic one for religious fundamentalists, with Bryan being publicly embarrassed by Darrow's questioning that forced him to concede that a literal interpretation of the Bible was indefensible; Bryan died less than a week later. (The trial would later be immortalized, albeit with certain dramatic liberties taken, by the classic play Inherit the Wind and its subsequent film adaptations.)

Meanwhile, the African American community started to finally gain its voice in American culture. Many black Southerners moved to Northern cities during the 1910's and the early part of this decade, leading to the emergence of a black middle class. Harlem, a neighborhood in New York City, was the most famous African American community, and so many of the most famous African American writers, artists, and musicians were based there that many historians call this period the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and other famous authors wrote stories that captured the African American experience and were read by millions, and Jazz started to spread throughout the country when white people realized that Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington and the others sounded really awesome. This trend would continue in the 1930s, leading to Big Band and Swing music. Such progress had its limits, though: lynchings continued, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) enjoyed a resurgence beginning in 1915, reaching a peak in membership in 1925 before a fast decline, and while African-American Josephine Baker became a big star in Paris, she faced racial hostility in America. Meanwhile, intellectuals of the community, such as W. E. B. DuBois, planted the seeds of what would eventually become the Civil Rights Movement.

Shorter work hours, coupled with higher wages and a larger part of the population working in cities paved the way for the beginning of a proper entertainment industry, which itself heralded the birth of what we call "pop culture": While in the decade before the first "true" celebrities came around (Houdini and Chaplin), the term would become popular as many personalities would become worshiped by their followers.

Silent films became an art medium of their own with classic films like The Wind and Metropolis setting new heights for screen drama and the great silent comedians like Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton gaining enormous popularity, along with fellow film stars Clara Bow, Rudolph Valentino and child actors Baby Peggy and Jackie Coogan. The fact that they didn't have sound meant that movies still hadn't killed off Vaudeville or Minstrel Shows just yet, but the advent of talkies beginning with The Jazz Singer finished the job, however, as well as it killed the careers of many silent actors. Radio progressed quickly through the last of its experimental phases and was firmly established as a mass-market medium by the end of the decade (including radios in cars, brought to you by some lowly company called Motorola), also establishing what is now known as "popular music" in the process. Sports became items of true passion with star slugger Babe Ruth, portentous pugilist Jack Dempsey, pigskin powerhouse Red Grange, golfing great Bobby Jones and others became heroes for the common man. Basketball, pool and hockey also gained popularity, and bowling became a popular informal sport decades before becoming a sitcom staple.

Magazines and newspapers enjoyed a booming circulation, including plenty of tabloids (New York had the Daily News, the Mirror and the Evening Graphic, not that the broadsheets like the World, the American or the Evening Journal were too objective) to fill everybody in on sensational divorce trials in New York, graphic pictures of shootouts in Chicago, the scandalous doings of celebrities in Hollywood, and the typical tales of daring people sitting in poles for several hours. Magazines were subject to new ideas such as investigative reporting and the digesting of articles of different magazines into a single publication. Lurid "dime novels" printed on pulp were also very popular. Meanwhile, ultra-low-def mechanical television had brief success with early adopters (essentially beta-testing it) before The Great Depression killed it off by the mid-'30s. The advent of (relatively) high-definition all-electronic TV would have to wait until another postwarprosperity boom.

This came at a time when the progressivism of The Gilded Age embodied by Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson was replaced by a new conservative order led by Republican Presidents Warren G Harding (1921-23), Calvin Coolidge (1923-29) and Herbert Hoover (1929-33), while the Democratic party became dominated by Southern conservatives. There were fears Bolshevism would take over the world if the League of Nations consolidated or if those impish immigrants, those undesirable unions or that pesky Pope with the protocols would undermine the free enterprise system among other American values.

Of course, the relics of The Gay '90s and The Edwardian Era, now doughty dowagers and grumpy old Colonels, look on disapprovingly, condemning everything from short skirts and hair, to make-up and swimmingwear. Of course, the "Bright Young Things" weren't really listening, and since those killjoys were among the ones who thought Prohibition and that not-so-great Great War were such good ideas, who could blame them? The new-fangled movies took a lot of the heat, as much for the off-screen antics of the stars (paging Mr. Arbuckle) as for the films' content.

One should also note that while things were just swell in America, Britain and (to a lesser extent) much of Western Europe (where it was dubbed The Golden Twenties across The Pond), if you were in an area hard hit by World War I (say, Germany, Italy, Russia, Turkey or the entire Caucasus Mountains region... before the Soviets annexed it) this was not a fun time. However, it doesn't mean that they didn't try, once they were able to pull themselves together again. But in Germany, there are rightwing paramilitary groups who have some very grand ambitions and there will be a few people who get a chilling feeling that one loudmouth Austrian with a toothbrush mustache is going to be very big trouble.

America's booming wealth and newfound geopolitical importance meant that lots of American writers and intellectuals (many of them disaffected by what they saw as the country's political complacency, puritanical moralism, and empty materialism) spent most of their time in Europe during this period, soaking up Europe's old culture even as European thinkers dreamed of wiping it all clean and starting over. The contrast between "naive" Americans and "decadent" Europe set a fictional pattern which has endured nearly a century.

Soviet Russia (called USSR since 1922), after a devastating civil war, experienced a short period of economic growth thanks to the NEP (new economic policy), a series of reforms that allowed free enterprise and private property. A new Soviet bourgeoisie was born, with a penchant for over-the-top parties and a slavish fascination with American fashion, music and dance. The Soviet Nouveau Riche (typically called a nepman) was a stock character in 20's Russian satire. Rather funny, they left behind the most durable heritage in Soviet arts and design, as most Soviet architecture and industrial design from the 1920s to the 1970swas ludicrously similar to period American design.

This period lasted sometime after World War I till the Crash of 1929 or just before the New Deal of 1933, or the entire Prohibition era (1920-1933). In cultural terms however, the 20s didn't end until 1935. Understandably, there was much nostalgia for this period as soon as it ended, with a lot of 1930's movies (especially the gangster ones) being set during this decade, and it was often a nostalgic setting during The '40s, The '50s, The '60s, and well into The '70s and The '80s. Actually, it has gotten to the point of people from almost a century later still relating to this decade.

B Movies: Surged around this time as bigger budgets became more common, with the film industry ending up differentiated between larger studios such as Paramount and Universal from "Poverty Row" companies.

Barely-There Swimwear: nowadays it's an Old-Timey Bathing Suit, but it was completely daring on that era. Two-piece bathing suits (the forerunner to the bikini) were specially controversial (even though it were just the same type —better known as the "pin up" nowadays— used in The '50s and The '80s).

Dance Sensation/Happy Dance: In prosperous times like these, dances like The Shimmy, The Charleston and The Black Bottom would set the dance floor ablaze with sensational flappers cutting the rug. The former was banned as bootleg, yet praised as a good aerobic dance; the latter two became the rage during the rest of the decade. Josephine Baker became a dance sensation in Paris.

Dumb Blonde: While the trope has older example the modern dumb blonde stereotype was given a huge surge in popularity via Anita Loos's Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1925).

Evolution: Started to really enter the public consciousness during the 1920's, especially because of the Scopes trial.

The Flapper: All women in this dance era are usually "flappers". She would typically wear a:

Dangerously Short Skirt: Despite being knee length due to a flourishing economy (the lengths were seemingly influenced by how the stock market performed that week), they were scandalous, at the time, according to their Victorian parents.

Cool Crown: Though not royalty, the feathered sequinned headbands give added glamour in the evening.

Foreign Culture Fetish: Following the discovery of King Tutankhamen's tomb in 1922, a wave of Egyptomania followed suit.

A minor one, at least for Chanel, are all things Russian like Cossack coats and constructivist motifs.

In this decade, Berlin became a cultural mecca for any budding artist whose streets and Kaffeehäuser are filled to the brim with intellectuals and writers writing off their Lost Generation woes, films filled with expressionist motifs, and art filled with abstract and deconstructive tones.

Jazz: Became universally popular thanks to the orchestras of Paul Whiteman ("The King of Jazz"), Rudy Vallee and Ted Lewis among others, while songwriters such as Cole Porter, George Gershwin and the team of Rodgers & Hart began the "Great American Songbook". Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington also became wildly popular with black and white audiences alike.

Pimped-Out Dress: Perhaps the most prominent decade of the 20th century for this trope. There's the figureless beaded chemise dresses as you see on old photographs and fashion magazines, the little black dresses made by Chanel, and then there's the 1920s alternative dress, the robes de style,. Popular couturiers at this era include:

Trope Makers: Everything we know as "popular culture" emerged at one time or another during the decade, thus making TV Tropes possible. Popular tropes that originated and/or popularized in this era are:

The Cheerleader: Before about 1925 all cheer squads featured only men (yup, even in "co-ed" campuses, believe it or not), but soon after some flappers decided to get in the act, and the rest its history...

The Necronauts comic is set during this period, and involves several celebrities of the time.

King Mob of The Invisibles gets to travel back in time to the Roaring Twenties.

The Grace Brannagh incarnation of Promethea held that role in the Twenties and Thirties.

An Abrafaxe arc (Mosaik No. 301-322) is set in America in 1929. Prohibition-era gangsters abound, Abrax is a G-man and Califax makes a fortune selling hotdogs, but as he invests his profits on the stock market he loses it all on Black Friday.

The Italian Disney series The Amazing Adventures of Fantomius-Gentleman Thief is mostly set in this period, crossing in the Thirties in its eleventh story.

Don Bluth's Anastasia. As the bulk in the movie takes place in Russia, this aspect is downplayed, since (as noted above) things weren't so great there at the time. Once Anya and friends arrive in Paris however, it's this trope all the way.

Easy Virtue's motif is more Genteel Interbellum Setting but Larita's presence and John's lifestyle evoke the spirit of the Roaring 20s - and how it clashes heavily with a conservative English countryside still mourning World War I. Other characters like Sarah seem like they're on their way to embracing the free-spirited lifestyle.

The Great Gatsby (1925) is probably the best-known novel set in the 1920s. It features a number of classic elements of the era, including the wartime memories, Jazz Age parties, and wealthy bootleggers. For that matter, much of F. Scott Fitzgerald oeuvre was produced in the 1920s and set there.

The Phryne Fisher mysteries (1989-) are set in 1928 and 1929, in Melbourne, Australia.

The novel Maisie Dobbs (2003) by Jacqueline Winspear is set in 1929, and introduces a series of books following a woman who went from a life "in service" (working as a maid in a grand house at 13) to university student, front-line nurse in The Great War, and eventually a private detective.

The Full Matilda (2004) has events starting in this period. Matilda's main storyline starts here, and she continues to live this lifestyle until the day she dies.

The Princess 99 (c. 2009) takes place in 1924, in New Orleans... but with wizards!

Nya tider by Solveig Olsson-Hultgren takes place in 1920 and 1921. A brand new fashion has started to emerge (Greta and Rebecka even cut their hair short!), in the fall women vote for the first time. Jazz is the new popular music for young people.

Live Action TV

The Brady Bunch: The 1973 episode "Never Too Young" has the family planning for a Roaring Twenties party. At one point, Mike and Carol duet on "I Want To Be Loved By You" (originally from the 1928 musical "Good Boy"), the older kids pore through a stack of old phonographs and laughing at some of the absurd titles of some of the songs, and the family rehearsing for a Charleston competition.

Poirot, the TV series; the books actually span a much longer period. (The Miss Marple series, meanwhile, is set in a different version of this trope - what might be called the suburban one. Middle-aged housewives sit around musing how hard it is to get good help since The War gave the rabble ideas.)

Though we never get to see it, the Star Trek: Voyager episode "Course: Oblivion" has a holodeck program set in Chicago of that period, which would have been the place for the duplicate Voyager's Tom Paris and B'Elanna Torres' honeymoon.

The Roaring '20s, a 1960-62 crime drama on ABC, was naturally set in this period.

Gangbusters was set in an Expy of 1920's Chicago, with player-characters on both sides of the law.

Theater

The '20s was when Broadway musicals as we know them first started to become popular, led by Cole Porter (although he didn't begin to achieve success until the late 20s, and his most well-known shows - Anything Goes and Kiss Me Kate didn't come out until the 30s and 40s, respectively). They reached a zenith in the 1930s, but many still associate Cole Porter with the Roaring 20s nonetheless.

To the point that The Drowsy Chaperone specifically parodied musicals from the 20s, even though many of the shows it was parodying - like the above Anything Goes - didn't come out until the 1930s.

And the presence of a cathedral radio, and a few anachronistic cars (by one year). And, maybe, checkbooks.

Chess Piece takes place at the near end of this decade. Of course, it being an alternate universe, some things are very, very different. Like ghosts inhabiting Antarctica, demons ruling Australia (no, really), and America being ruled by a kindlydemonic-looking king.

The Legend of Korra is set in the Avatar universe's version of this time period, and the soundtrack shows the influence, with Word of God describing it as "If Jazz was invented in China during the 20s."

Other

At Knotts Berry Farm, the "Boardwalk" area, which now holds most of the park's thrill rides, was previously called "The Roaring 20s," a literal theme park version of the era.

Community

Tropes HQ

TVTropes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available from thestaff@tvtropes.org. Privacy Policy